


Someplace Safer

by FarawayZephyr



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Death mentioned, F/M, Language Barrier, Not Super romantic but it's in there, Single Parent OC, Soft Slow Build?, season 3 spoilers!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-29 09:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FarawayZephyr/pseuds/FarawayZephyr
Summary: The Fourth of July Fair was supposed to be a simple outing between Eileen Randall, her daughter, and their friends. Instead, she finds herself saving a man's life and her empathy  biting off more than it can chew.





	1. July 4th, 1985

**Author's Note:**

> Silly self-indulgent idea I had after watching the new season. Enjoy some Alexei love! Expect a not terribly long story with a few short chapters. 
> 
> Russian words in Italics - Use your best judgement! I tried to make the story readable without translating everything that's said.   
> Disclaimer that all Russian is thanks to googling and that I'm not a medical professional, and that this story will take some suspension of disbelief :)

_ July 4th, 1985 _

The Fourth of July Fun Fair was one of the biggest  _ positive  _ things to happen in Hawkins, Indiana in a long time. Too many disappearances, the faked death of a child, conspiracies surrounding the now defunct Department of Energy, and the new mall closing too many mom and pop shops. It all piled up and left a sour taste in the mouth of Eileen Randall. She was grateful that her job wasn’t in the process of closing, but some of her friends weren’t so lucky. 

But tonight, thanks to the funding of Mayor Larry Kline, she was temporarily distracted from the negatives. Lights of every color shone brightly as far as her eyes could see. They lit up the towering carnival rides and the rigged game booths. Children screamed in delight and fear from atop the ferris wheel, their voices almost drowned out by the combination of the live brass band and radios with local stations turned up to max. The sweet and greasy scents from food stalls wafted through every corner of the fair grounds. 

It was completely overstimulating, but it was fun. 

The music began to calm down as Eileen approached the center stage with her group. She was a few steps ahead of Linda McDowell and her husband, Fred, her closest friends in town despite the gap in their ages, looking for an area to sit for the speech and the fireworks display. The three had met when their daughters had become best friends in grade school. 

Eileen spotted an opening with enough space for the five of them and turned around to reach for her daughter, April, to guide her to the spot. April was far behind with Marie McDowell, looking terribly uninterested in spending time with their parents. They were both thirteen, an age where they’d give anything just to be whispering to themselves and  _ not  _ at a fair with their mothers. 

Eventually the group was back together again and Mayor Kline began his patriotic speech under the banner of the Roane County Fair. 

Eileen could see through the man. He wasn’t exactly subtle in the fact this was all in preparation for his reelection campaign, having “spared no expense” for the lovely town. Nonetheless, the people got what they had come for, a beautiful fireworks display. The girls laid on the ground to get the best view of the explosion of color and the adults hovered above them with their necks bent upward. People waved their handheld flags furiously with each and every boom. 

Eileen looked away from the sky towards her daughter who, despite her determination to have a bad time this evening, was smiling and pointing up at the display. She wished they could do activities that kept her smiling every night this summer. They only had one more month together before April returned to her dad in the city. Eileen was afraid that, as the girl was getting older, one of these years she’d choose to stop coming to the rural bore away from the city lights. 

The finale was loud and bright and was met with more cheers than imaginable while the Hawkins High School band played the national anthem. After the  _ booms  _ and the band was finished, Kline took the stage once again to remind everyone to have an amazing time with the rest of their night. 

“Having fun?” Eileen asked the girls, offering a hand to help them off the ground. They nodded and smiled, and immediately turned to discuss which game booths they would head off to next. 

“I think I’m going to head home,” she said, turning to Linda and Fred. Eileen had already planned on only staying until the fireworks display, as she had work in the morning. They had also already planned for April to spend the night at the McDowell house.

“You sure you don’t want to ride anything with us?” offered Fred, an arm on his wife’s shoulder. 

Eileen shook her head and drew out the response with an awkward laugh, “ _ Noooo _ , thank you.” She was more than a little frightened at the speed and height of every ride there. 

“How many tickets do you have left?” Eileen asked her daughter, who pulled out just two from the pocket of her shorts. “Come on, I’ll buy you a few more before I go.” She pulled April under her arm, despite the complaints, as they walked as a group back to the ticket booth. She purchased ten more tickets and handed April a few dollars in cash for food. 

“All set?” she asked the girls, who were eager to run off and play before they too had to return home. With a series of nods, Eileen smiled, gave her daughter a side hug, and told her to call when she needed to be picked up the next day. She said thank you multiple times to the McDowells for keeping an eye on April, as she did every sleepover night, and said her goodbyes. 

Making her way back to her car, a rusty little Honda parked somewhere in the fields, she took in the final sights and sounds of the fair. She wondered if it would become an annual thing for Hawkins. It certainly wouldn’t hurt if it did. She walked past the funnel cake stand and the fun house, hands in the pockets of her jeans, and felt a bit guilty for not taking a bigger part in the festivities and always standing back and watching the others wait in line at the attractions. It wasn’t particularly her thing anyway, and she had fun seeing the others have fun. She lingered for ten minutes before leaving for good. 

She had reached the entrance gate when she heard a scream. 

She whipped her head around quickly and was met with cries of, “Is anyone a doctor?” Eileen wasn’t a doctor, but a nurse. She hadn’t worked in a hospital in years, rather Hawkins’ retirement home, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have the training. She ran to the yelling woman as fast as her feet could carry her without thinking any further. If an actual doctor showed up in addition so be it, but for now she would help the situation however she could. 

A flip switched in her brain. All of her attention was focused on the situation at hand and she blocked out all the thoughts of how she was at the fair with her daughter to have a good time, and instead was there purely to help. 

Eileen didn’t ask any questions, just ran into the small alleyway between food stalls where the distressed woman was pointing. 

“I was just walking past and-and,” the woman spoke in a panic, struggling to get any words out while also speaking a mile a minute. Her husband was holding her to calm her down and her teenage son appeared at their side with wide eyes. “He was just there on the ground and I-” she was crying. 

Eileen was kneeling in front of a man, who was hardly sitting up with his back against a blue and yellow stand. His eyes were closed under his large framed glasses. Streaks of tears ran down his face, mixing with the shiny layer of sweat he was drenched in. Most notably, his white button up was covered in blood, more blood than she had seen in a  _ very  _ long time, starting in the middle of his torso and spreading outward. He held another shirt over the wound, but with no strength left in his body, it was doing nothing to stop the bleeding. 

He’d been shot in the middle of the fair and no one had been the wiser. 

She checked his pulse, expecting the worst. She pressed hard into his wrist… 

It was still there, just barely. 

“Get me napkins, shirts, alcohol, first aid kits, anything!” Eileen ordered into the small crowd that was forming around the scene. A few people went running in different directions to try to find anything on her list while the woman took off her own thin flannel shirt and began ripping it with all her strength into strips. She removed the bloodied blue shirt and unbuttoned the man’s white one. There was the hole, the bullet without a doubt somewhere still inside. 

“Someone get an ambulance!” she added to her directions. Would someone be able to find a phone all the way out here? She hadn’t even thought to check if they had any emergency vehicles on standby at the event when she arrived. 

The nurse began to apply the strips of fabric over the wound, putting as much pressure as she could on them each time. 

“Can you hear me?” she spoke loudly as she worked. “I’m a nurse, I’m here to help you.” She received no response but continued to speak, in case the man could hear but not respond. “ We’re going to get the bleeding stopped and then get you to a hospital. This is going to hurt, I’m sorry.” She pushed hard into his abdomen, which caused the man to take a sharp breath. He was aware, somewhere in there, which was a good sign. 

“There’s an ambulance coming,” someone from the back of the crowd shouted. She sighed heavily in relief. 

“I’m going to look for some ID on you, okay?” she asked to no response. She kept one hand pressing on the wound and another fished through his pants pockets that were accessible. She found his wallet in the right one and flipped it open quickly. She found a few one dollar bills, a couple of fair tickets, and eventually an unusual form of identification. It must have been a work visa of some kind. It said his name in the top left hand corner, above a picture of him in much better shape than he was now: Alexei Melnikov. 

Undeniably Russian, which would have put her on edge if she wasn’t so focused on saving his life. 

“Alexei, hold on please, you’re going to be okay,” she spoke to him. He grit his teeth in response to the pain. 

The sirens from the ambulance could just barely be made out over the fair’s music and mechanical whirrings that stopped for no one. Eileen didn’t notice until the paramedics arrived at her side with a stretcher that they were even there. The two men lifted him on a three count, to which Alexei let out a loud groan as his head feel back before making contact with the  gurney. Eileen ran alongside the EMTs, weaving through the crowds who had stopped to stare, the man’s wallet in one hand and the shredded remains of her pullover in the other. 

Outside of the entrance, the red and blue lights only added to the blaring colors of the fair. They loaded the man into the back of the vehicle and slammed the doors behind him, pulling away with a police car right behind them. 

Eileen had done her part in saving the man, but she couldn’t help herself from racing to her own car and peeling out of the parking lot. Her bloody fingers gripped anxiously at the steering wheel, already drying and cracking at each knuckle where they bent. She was in no way keeping up with the ambulance, but she was driving much faster than she ever did. She needed to calm down but her adrenaline wouldn’t let her just yet. She also needed to keep up, unsure if the emergency vehicles were headed for Hawkins General or Hawkins Memorial Hospital. 

In the end, they ended up at Hawkins General Hospital, which she was grateful for as it was closer. She parked her car and ran in the front doors, only just then noting her appearance made it look like she was in need of emergency care. Her dark, auburn hair looked ratty and she was covered in sweat. Not to mention all of the blood across her hands and smeared across her grey t-shirt. 

One of the receptionists were looking at her with wide eyes. 

“I,” Eileen approached the counter and tried to find words to explain, but she was out of breath. “I’m a nurse, I-” she wiped her forehead with the least messy part of hand to keep sweat from dripping down into her eyes, “I just helped a man at the fair. They brought him here I think, gunshot. I have his identification.”

The receptionist blinked a few times and then asked Eileen to sit down, so she did. A minute later the woman was brought some hand towels and directed towards a bathroom to wash up. She left the wallet at the counter and went in, scrubbing at her hands aggressively with as much soap as the bottle would dispense to her. She then splashed water into her face and held a clean towel over her eyes. 

She looked terribly messy and exhausted from the encounter. Her brown eyes were now begging for sleep as she was calming down. The whole situation was the last thing she expected to happen that night, a night of fun with her daughter that might have been the highlight of their summer. And now she had to work in the morning after all of it.

She hoped she did everything right. Tending to his injuries was basic knowledge she had learned a long time ago, but she hadn’t worked in an actual hospital in so long, maybe they changed procedures.

As long as the man had arrived at the hospital alive she what she was supposed to. 

She exited the restroom and two police officers instantly approached her. 

“Ma’am,” they greeted, eyeing the bloody, wet towels in her hand. The receptionist stood to take them away and then the officers asked for the full story. 

Eileen lamented she didn’t have much to offer them, simply that she was about to leave and someone called for a doctor. She wasn’t a doctor but she did the best that she could. 

As she was telling her story, it had only just occurred to her that someone was at the fairgrounds, and could still be there, with a loaded gun. Her eyes widened. 

“You did good,” one of the deputies told her, putting away the small notepad he had taken notes on, “now go home and get some sleep.”

She glanced at the clock. It was 11:30.

She already wanted to call in sick tomorrow. 


	2. July 5th, 1985

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like more people were interested in this story than I expected! Thanks for checking it out!
> 
> As always, Russian words in Italics - Use your best judgement! I tried to make the story readable without translating everything that's said.  
> Disclaimer that all Russian is thanks to googling and that I'm not a medical professional, and that this story will take some suspension of disbelief :)

_July 5th, 1985_

Eileen didn’t end up calling in the next day, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t exhausted. She had arrived home, a two bedroom on not exactly the nicest end of town, and immediately taken a shower. She ended up taking a second in the morning before work, which was part of her routine. Through both she worried about the safety of the people at the fair, the safety of her daughter. 

She was torn between calling to make sure the girls were okay and feeling bad that she would be waking the McDowell house up at 6:30 in the morning during their summer break if she was overreacting. 

She pulled a pair of light blue scrubs out of her dresser and brought them into the living room with her. She flipped her television to the morning news and changed out of her pajamas, into her work uniform while listening intently for any talk about a tragedy at the fair. Surprisingly, the fair was never once mentioned. Instead, all eyes were on the Starcourt Mall. 

Eileen was in the process of buttering a slice of bread for toast when she heard it. The Starcourt Mall had burned down just several hours ago. They showed the scene, one of the entrances charred completely black and the walls around it in not much better shape. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars covered the parking lot and yellow caution tape went on as far as the news camera could capture.

The camera changed to an interview. Deputy Phil Callahan was the focus of the frame. He had his hat off and kept looking soberly between the camera and the scene behind him. And then he spoke. 

Eileen dropped her knife against the counter. 

Chief Jim Hopper had died in the fire. 

Eileen didn’t know Jim particularly well personally, perhaps no one did, but he was an important figure in the town. The recognized his truck as he took corners too fast and his large figure when he used to sit in the booths at old Benny's restaurant. He was strong and kept people safe. 

And he’d died trying to save peoples’ lives. 

Eileen was now crossing the kitchen and reaching for the phone hung on the wall. She punched in the number for the McDowell house. She looped her fingers through the coils of the cord and chewed on her lower lip anxiously until someone picked up. 

“Hello?” Fred McDowell had answered the phone brightly. Eileen assumed he was also up getting ready for work, and she was glad she didn’t wake anyone. 

“It’s Eileen,” she replied before getting right into her questioning. “Have you seen the news yet? Are the girls alright?”

“I just picked up the paper, I haven’t seen anything,” the man responded, sounding confused. “But they’re alright, still in bed. Are _you_ alright, we heard sirens right after you left last night.”

Breath caught in Eileen’s throat as she tried to figure out what to say. She didn’t want to casually mention that she had tended to the bullet wounds of an almost dead man at a family-friend event. She didn’t want to make them worry and feel unsafe in their own town, but she didn’t want to keep it a secret either. Was there some serial killer running through Hawkins everyone needed to be warned about?

“I’m okay. I saw them putting a man on a stretcher when I was leaving,” the woman said. It was half of the truth. As long as the girls were safe, she could wait to tell them the whole story in person the next time she saw them. 

“That’s good,” Fred replied. 

“You might want to check the news,” Eileen said with a sigh, remembering the other subject at hand, “I don’t know if they would have made it to the morning edition.”

Fred thanked her for the news and soon said he had to head to work. Eileen looked at the clock and realized she did too and said another thank you for watching April and that she’d pick her up that afternoon, then hung up the phone. 

She leaned back against the wall. This was certainly the most excitement she’d had in years. She wished any of it was positive. 

Eileen picked up the knife from the counter, threw it in the sink, and hurried to put her bread into the toaster, all with a feeling of dread looming over her. She hunted for where she might have tossed her keys the night before and put her purse over her shoulders. When the toaster _popped,_ she grabbed her small breakfast in a paper towel and headed out towards the car, eating it as she went.

She passed more police cars that day on her drive through town than she had seen in a very long time. The sidewalks, though, looked practically empty and “going out of business sale” signs were aplenty. 

When arrived at Hawkins Care Center, though, nothing was out of the ordinary. Almost all of the residents she was employed to take care of didn’t retain the information on the news, or know of happenings outside of the building. Only the other nurses whispered about the mall and the chief of police, and about the thirty or more bystanders that also died. 

Eileen was exhausted and the day had only just begun. 

As she worked, every cut and bruise she saw reminded her of the previous night. When she had to place a Band-Aid on an elderly patient’s thin skin, her brain flashed back the almost infinite amount of blood that poured from the man’s wound. She felt like a bad nurse for not being able to forget about it and move on. She simply hadn’t seen anything that bad, that tragic, even when she worked at the hospital. She was used to taking blood pressure and weighing kids who came in for physicals. Even when one of the Burness boys had come in from getting shot, it had been with a BB pellet that had been embedded in his leg for a week. 

She’d go back to Hawkins General after she took April home. She’d see how the man was doing. He would without a doubt be out of surgery by now, asleep in a recovery bed. 

If he made it, that is, her negative thoughts reminded her. 

She wished she wasn’t so pessimistic anytime a situation was out of her control. She was always like that though, since she was little. If she wasn’t in charge of the group project in her school classes she’d grow anxious that they would fail. From the second she started dating April’s dad she knew it wouldn’t last. Working around people so close to death couldn’t have helped either. 

Eileen made it through the day, trying her best to stay positive. After changing the sheets on the recently unoccupied beds and struggling to get Mrs. Swint to take her afternoon pills, Eileen could leave for the evening. She grabbed her purse and keys from the break-room and began her drive to the McDowell house. It didn’t take terribly long to arrive. 

Pulling off of Dearborn Street and into the driveway, Eileen realized she’d have to tell her daughter the story of leaving the fair if she planned to go to the hospital afterwards. 

She took a deep breath, got out of the car, and knocked on the house door. 

Linda answered the door, grief etched into the lines of her face. 

“Did you hear about Jim Hopper?” were the first words she spoke. 

Eileen nodded solemnly. Linda had been in school with the chief, hadn’t she? It was hard having someone you grew up knowing die. 

“I can’t imagine how Joyce is taking it,” she sighed, ushering Eileen into her house. 

Joyce Byers was an odd woman who had had too many things happen to her in the past years. Eileen had only spoken to her a handful of times when shopping at Melvald’s General Store, but knew they had some things in common, being two of the few single mothers in town. Tragically, Joyce’s son’s death had been faked by the government in ‘83, or so the rumors and conspiracies said, and now her boyfriend (their actual relationship status unclear, Eileen just assumed from the gossip) had also died. 

“That poor woman…” Eileen lamented. 

The two stayed quiet for a moment until Mrs. McDowell took one step up the staircase and yelled, “April, your mom’s here!” There was another moment of silence before feet padded around above them and April and Marie slowly made their way downstairs. April had her overnight bag over her shoulder as she walked towards the door and Marie leaned on the hand railing. 

“Did you have fun?” Eileen asked. April gave a, “Yup,” and adjusted the straps on her bag. 

“Did you eat dinner yet?” she asked a second question and received a shake of the head in response. Eileen shared a look with Linda, a look only mothers would understand that said “teenagers sure are like _that.”_

“Burger Chef?” April offered a meal plan, the most words she had said since her mother arrived. 

“We’ll see,” Eileen responded playfully. Fast food sounded delicious in that moment and would save her the time of cooking. With a huge thanks, the two left the residence and made their way towards the previously mentioned restaurant. After a wait in the drive-thru line and retrieving the order (a chicken sandwich, a cheeseburger, and a large order of french fries to share), they were back on the open road and Eileen began her speech nervously. 

“So,” she started, passing the greasy brown bag onto her daughter to hold, “we need to have a talk.” 

April groaned and looked nervously at her mother. She then fished out a few steamy fries to munch on until they got home to make whatever embarrassing conversation they were about to have more bearable. 

“It’s nothing bad,” Eileen assured, though it was fun to see her daughter squirm a bit. She opened her mouth to give last night’s story but struggled to know where to begin. “So, last night. I left you guys and- well you heard the ambulances, right?”

“What’d you **do**?” April asked suspiciously, rolling the bag back up to keep the food warm. 

“Well, last night, at the fair, a man got shot.” Eileen glanced back and forth over her out of focus hands on the steering wheel to April in the seat next to her. April’s eyes were wide and confused. “Someone found him between two of the food stalls and they called out for a doctor and, well, I helped.” She’d spare the more gruesome details. 

“Holy sh--crap,” April didn’t seem to know what to say in response, and didn’t do the greatest job at _not_ cursing in front of her mother. Eileen gave a warning look in response of the language. “Is he alive?”

“I’m going to go to the hospital later, to make sure,” the woman confirmed. “You can come if you want.”

April grimaced at the idea and Eileen didn’t blame her. Her daughter had spent more time at the hospital when she was a child than any kid should have had to, between being in and out for sickness and for having to occupy her time there when Eileen couldn’t get a babysitter. 

“Guess we’ll eat and then I’ll get going,” said Eileen. “I shouldn’t get home any later than seven.” It was a few minutes after four now, that gave her more than enough time.

The car pulled into the usual spot it parked on the side of the road and the two exited into their small house. Eileen kicked her shoes off and retrieved the Heinz ketchup from the fridge as April set down the bag on the counter. They divided their meals and sat on the wooden bar stools while they ate. 

“Do anything fun at Marie’s?” Eileen brought up through her bites of food. This luckily got April to contribute to a conversation. They had only played a few more games at the fair before going home and heading to bed. Apparently, they had run into the boy Marie had a crush on, Brandon Nelson, right before they left and the girl was bitter about not getting to talk to him longer for the rest of the night. 

“Any boys you like end up at the fair?” Eileen teased and then said she was kidding. April groaned out a _“Mom,”_ like she always did. 

“Why do _you_ have to go back to the hospital for some guy you don’t know?” asked April, with a mouth full of her sandwich. She returned to the subject from the car. 

“He was, uh, foreign, so I don’t know if he has anyone else,” Eileen tried to explain without giving too much away. She knew they were teaching the kids in school to be wary of anything Russian. Hell, they were teaching the same things to adults. It would be too dangerous to jump to conclusions. Half the people that man met were probably thinking he was part of the Red Army if they believed the propaganda, which half of Hawkins did. 

April hummed a half satisfied response. 

Finished eating, Eileen did away with their trash and quickly changed out of her messy scrubs. Hawkins summer left everyone sweaty after only a few hours, so she was glad to change out of the clothes she had worked in all day. She threw on a maroon t-shirt and denim shorts and went on her way. 

“Please stay out of trouble,” Eileen said to her daughter, who was in the process of turning the television set on and changing the dial to a better channel. 

“I will.”

“Be back soon.”

Eileen was getting tired of driving all over town. She arrived at the hospital for the second time in twenty-four hours. This time she parked in the visitors section and not right next to the emergency room entrance. She approached the reception desk. A different woman was working it than last night. 

“Hi, I’m, umm,” she should have prepared better. They wouldn’t let her see anyone in the condition he was if they weren’t related. “My cousin was admitted last night.”

“Name?” the receptionist asked for, looking at a clipboard containing a list of patient names. 

“Eileen Randall,” the woman said, playing dumb and wracking her brain to remember his last name correctly. 

“The _patient's_ name,” the receptionist did not look amused. 

“Alexei Melnikoff,” Eileen spit out, hoping it was right. By the receptionist’s reaction, something must have been slightly off, but she was still given a room number and the go ahead. She had to travel a few floors higher in the elevator but eventually arrived in the correct location. 

Eileen was nervous. Her plans full of empathy and a desire to help had led her this far and now she was worried. 

She exhaled from her nose, prepped any courage she had, and gently rapped the door with her knuckles. She quietly opened the door just an inch, and then slowly all the way. She let herself in and used her fingers to muffle the door from slamming behind her. 

The walls of the room were stark white, contrasting with the dark wooden frames on the random, generic landscape paintings hung against them. A bulletin board had a few pieces of paper listing doctor and nurse’s names, medications, and meal times. Not much had changed in her year’s away from the hospital.

Lying asleep on the bed in the middle of the room was the man she had rescued the previous night. His curly hair was still greasy and a mess, but his face and arms looked like they had been wiped down and cleaned. An IV line was affixed to his upper right forearm, it’s bag nearly empty. His glasses were folded and set on the end table next to the lamp. 

Eileen wasn’t sure what to do next. She didn’t want to wake him so she gently set herself into the plush chair beside his bed and waited, occupying herself with a stray magazine from her purse. 

Thirty minutes went by and the man eventually stirred from his sleep. Slowly his eyes blinked open and he focused on the ceiling. His eyes squinted at the tiles above him. 

Eileen cleared her throat carefully and prayed she wouldn’t startle him. 

Unfortunately, she did, and he jolted his attention towards her. Eileen gave a small wave and “hello” and he palmed at the side table for his glasses. 

“Joyce?” were the first words to escape his lips before he found them. He placed the glasses on his face, peered at her over his own chest from the horizontal angle he was lying, and then shook his head at his own question. He tried to raise himself up with his elbows but couldn’t manage the strength, so Eileen shot up to stand beside the bed where he could see more clearly. 

“Sorry,” she apologized for making it harder on him. 

The man was studying her intently. 

“I was the one who found you last night,” she explained. “Someone called an ambulance for you. I wanted to make sure you made it out of surgery okay.”

There was a long pause. 

_“Angliyski,”_ he began, short of breath and shaking his head, “ _ya ne govoryu po angliyski.”_

 _Angliyski,_ she could figure out, meant _English._ Could he not speak the language at all? That could cause some extra trouble between the two of them and the rest of the hospital staff. Eileen had taken a French class in college, but Russian was an entirely different alphabet. 

“Okay…” she mumbled, trying to figure out another way to go about communicating. She pointed towards him, “Alexei,” she said his name, assuming it was correct. He nodded and she continued, pointing towards herself. “Eileen.”

“Eileen,” he repeated. 

“Yes.” Now that introductions were out of the way, she would try to explain why she was even there. “I,” she pointed towards herself again, “found you,” she pointed to him, “last night.” She went on to point towards her torso, and then his, and mimed wrapping something around him. “Do you understand?” she asked with over expressive hands. She prayed he did, and that she wasn’t being annoyingly pandering to him. 

He nodded his head as quickly as he could and she thanked God. 

Before going any further, the nurse in her took over. She grabbed the remote that controlled the bed and held it in front of Alexei’s face, finger hovering over one of the buttons to show him what she was about to do. He showed no complaints, so she pressed the button down. The bed slowly rose behind his head and back, allowing him to sit comfortably at an incline. When situated, Eileen mimed taking a drink. 

“Thirsty?”

_“P_ _ozhaluysta.”_

Eileen held up a finger that indicated she would only be gone a second. She stepped back out into the hall, found an on-duty nurse, and requested a cup of water. A minute later she received a small plastic cup with a straw and lots of ice. She returned to Alexei and had to measure how good of shape he was in. Luckily, his hands had enough strength in them to hold the cup and take sips himself. In addition, he bit into one of the ice cubes and noisily chewed. He must have been feeling okay, Eileen mused, or he had some very powerful pain meds. 

Then a thought hit her. 

“Did you say ‘Joyce’?” Eileen asked, repeated the name the man muttered upon first being woken. She had now heard that name twice in one day. What sort of coincidence was that? “Joyce Byers? she risked.

Alexei was nodding again. 

_“Ty znayesh' yeye?”_ he asked. Eileen couldn’t figure it out. At least she had his confirmation from the shakes of his head and positive tone. 

“Let me find a phone book,” she was holding up a finger once again and exiting the room. She found the floor’s receptionist and asked, not remembering the hospital actively lending a directory out when she worked there. Thankfully, they had one she could borrow. She returned to the patient‘s room and hovered next to the phone on the side of Alexei’s bed. 

The Roane County phone book was flipped open to the residential section. Luckily, the Bs were near the beginning. Eileen hopped the number wasn’t unlisted. 

Like a strike of lightning, she found the name and number. She picked up the cream phone with dozens of buttons on the bedside table and punched in the correct keys. The line rang once, and then five times. 

No one was going to answer. 

The answering machine box was full. 

There went the only lead to figuring out where Alexei belonged. 

Eileen hung up the phone and closed the book of numbers. She gave a disappointed expression and shook her head at the man beside her. He sighed and his shoulders sunk back into the bed. 

In that moment, Eileen decided he would be her responsibility. He’d be in the hospital for at least a few more days. She would visit him after work and make sure he was improving. She’d do all the things you did when a loved one was recovering from surgery. She didn’t have the heart to leave him on his own until she was sure someone he knew would be at the hospital to pick him up when he was discharged. 

Alexei looked tired. His pills must have been kicking back in. 

“Alexei,” she grabbed his attention once more, “I’ll be back whenever I can. We’ll get a hold of Joyce too.”

The archaic smile he wore must have been his natural state. He fell back asleep wearing it. 


End file.
